Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Breen, on his appointment. I know that he will do an exceptional job and will be extremely committed to advancing the agenda of full employment for Ireland and its citizens, not just full employment but fair employment as well, as articulated by my colleague, Senator Gavan, and others.

If we pursue the correct policies we will and can have full employment in this country by 2018. That is my ambition and it is the ambition of the Labour Party. I take great personal pride and satisfaction in the role that I played, as super junior Minister in the last phase of the last Government, in setting out a policy agenda to move unemployment below 8% for the first time since the economic crash. When the last Government took office the number of unemployed was heading towards 500,000 and there was a stench of fear and hopelessness across the country. Those who had lost jobs were not aware and did not know when they might secure a job again and those who had jobs were fearful that their jobs might be lost within a day or a week. We are now on track to have about 2 million people at work very shortly and that is a record for this State. Things are now very different compared with the horrendous mess that the previous Administration inherited in 2011.

I make no apologies for being entirely obsessive about the dignity of work and the idea that working people should have their dignity in the workplace guaranteed, protected and secured. Job growth in every economic sector is growing at a decent pace. We will continue to see an uplift in areas where the pace of recover has not been as strong as might have been the case in other sectors. Construction is a good example. While the construction rates of recovery are decent there is more to be done. With the €4 billion housing package, initiated by the last Government and the uplift in private housing construction, which is so necessary for society, we can get more construction workers back to work. It is a sector of society that was badly damaged by the nature and extent of the economic crash.

The lessons that we have learned from the economic crash need to always be at the forefront of our considerations of economic policy and our approach to job creation. That is why I think it is crucial that the philosophy and the approach that we adopted, vis-à-visAn Action Plan for Jobs, is retained and remains at the core of the Minister of State's work, his Minister's work and that of the entire Government. The action plan has a cross-departmental agenda and the system and approach have been proven to work. We should never again see our employment profile excessively dependent on one or two sectors at the expense of other sectors. We should not take the view that it will be "all right on the night" for society provided the coffers are full and Exchequer revenues continue to grow. We should be concerned about the mix in our economy and ensure that proper policies in terms of structure in the economy should be pursued.

Neither should our trajectory towards full employment be characterised by the notion that a job at any price will do. That is not right and it is not something we should support. Our recovery needs to be wage-led. We have to create an economic and jobs model that ensures protection in the workplace and provides for improvements in pay, hours, terms and conditions.

By 2018, we should have sustainable full employment in this country and, importantly, it should be employment that will sustain households. As my colleague, Senator Gavan, articulated earlier, too many people here go to bed on a Sunday night not knowing what amount of hours they will have to work in that given week and whether they will have a job that will enable them to simply make ends meet. That is an unacceptable scenario in this day and age. That is why we need to end the abuse of if-and-when contracts. I look forward to seeing the Minister's proposals emerging shortly. I can reassure the House that the Labour Party will not be found wanting in terms of filling the existing vacuum because those who have if-and-when contracts can no longer afford to wait for a solution.

Working people caught up in the half light of if-and-when contracts cannot afford to wait for a solution, neither can their families nor society. We should aim to provide decent work and not a job at any price. There is no dignity in workers being permanently dependent on the family income supplement to top up their wages. Work should always pay. That is why we established the Low Pay Commission last year and increased the national minimum wage. In July, I hope to see decent increases and further increases in the national minimum wage when the Low Pay Commission issues its second statutory report on the rate of the national minimum wage for 2017.

Ireland must move towards providing a living wage. Good employers pay decent wages. Despite the protestations of some ideologues on the opposite end of the political spectrum, there is a clear business case to be made for a firm paying its staff a living wage quite apart from the social considerations.

In order to back businesses, the risk takers who employ the vast bulk of Irish workers need to have a functioning banking system and alternative finance opportunities if we are to reach our goal of full employment. I am pleased to see that the amended credit guarantee scheme is operating, that there have been improvements in Microfinance Ireland and that the facilities available from the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland are working well to support the SME sector. As the Minister of State will know, the availability of credit is the lifeblood of the economy. We must always be conscious of the fact that 90% of Irish jobs are in the SME sector.

I agree that sustainable full employment also means rewarding hard work. That is why I strongly believe that the Government should continue to ensure there is an equalisation of the tax system for the self-employed. They are the ones who take the risks, develop their ideas and employ people in good decent jobs across the country.

In conclusion, I agree with Senator Mulherin that we need to properly resource local enterprise offices. I am proud of the role that I played in helping the local enterprise office idea to evolve and bed down over the past couple of years. LEOs are a one-stop-shop, a first-stop-shop and a signposting service for not just new SMEs but also existing companies that want to grow and expand. Clearly, the relationship between the local enterprise office and Enterprise Ireland is extremely important. We must ensure, particularly with the very uncertain international economic situation in which we find ourselves, that Enterprise Ireland is properly resourced so that small companies are properly resourced and advised in ways to access foreign markets and supply Irish goods, products and services. There is a big job of work for Enterprise Ireland to do and it is only too capable of doing so in terms of helping Irish companies diversify into other markets, given the uncertainties in the UK for obvious reasons at the moment.